Constant Evolution

That should be the motto of every pho­tog­ra­pher. No mat­ter how skilled, how aware or even how great you are at light­ing there is always some­thing you can learn espe­cially when you make mis­takes, and lets be hon­est if you’re not push­ing your skills every time you do a ses­sion you’re not mak­ing mis­takes. Mis­takes are how we evolve, but also we evolve to pre­vent mis­takes hap­pen­ing. This is called expe­ri­ence.Com­mon mis­takes are for­get­ting to charge camera/flash bat­ter­ies, leav­ing the ISO too high, the cam­era set­tings are wrong, for­get­ting your mem­ory cards or leav­ing kit behind in loca­tion. Many of these mis­takes can be pre­vented if you fol­low a rou­tine and do pre-session and post-session checks. This is what I do before I do a session:

I review the kit from a kit list this cov­ers things like:

1. Lenses – check­ing dust caps, clean­li­ness and oper­a­tion (zoom, switches and so on).
2. Cam­era – zero­ing the cam­era to default set­tings I use most often. This is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant task I do. I also clean the sen­sor with an air blower.
3. Check lights/flashes – con­nec­tors, set­tings, mod­el­ling lights and bulbs.
4. Trig­gers and meters – check power, test the bat­ter­ies and more.
5. Make sure the kit is in its proper place, a quick visual way to see what’s missing.
6. Man­u­als – store them on your phone or make sure they’re in your bag.

I also charge all bat­ter­ies before a ses­sion if I’m able to. This way I know before going to loca­tion I’ve min­imised any pos­si­bil­ity of gear fail­ure. Sure gear fails on loca­tion but at least I’ve reduced the risks of a dud session.

When con­duct­ing the ses­sion each bit of gear I fin­ish using gets packed away. Not only this saves clut­ter build­ing up but also min­imises the risk of los­ing gear in loca­tion espe­cially if you’re work­ing in the dark. If I’m going to use it again I put it near a loca­tion where the rest of the gear is.

Post ses­sion I check for gaps in the bags, every­thing has a place and if there is a gap that means some­thing is miss­ing. I review the shots with the model/client if appro­pri­ate and get doc­u­men­ta­tion signed (the model release for exam­ple) if I’ve not done so already at the start of the session.

When I get home I carry out all the checks again on the gear espe­cially if any gear failed or didn’t func­tion as expected. I then sit down at the com­puter and start typ­ing up notes and use Microsoft OneNote to draw light­ing dia­grams and other infor­ma­tion from the set. This is impor­tant because it’ll help review the ses­sion duds. If need be I’ll redo the notes that I’ve done on the mobile phone in loca­tion. This is impor­tant to review the ses­sion if you have time. This is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant if you’ve used new gear for the first time, it will help you learn how the tools per­form under var­i­ous con­di­tions and, hope­fully, help you pre­vent mak­ing the same mis­takes twice or chas­ing your tail won­der­ing why some­thing didn’t work. The other key aspect of notes is that you’ll be able to repli­cate the light­ing set up.

Now it’s a time to catch your breath and con­sider what can be improved, and every­thing can be improved. The more expe­ri­ence you are the less you’ll find to improve in some aspects but if you search hard enough you’ll find areas to check. I often ask the client or model what they thought about the ses­sion get­ting feed­back is always impor­tant but you have to con­sider if it’s appro­pri­ate to ask the client.

I also then start to back up all data, ses­sion notes and scan the release. The release is stored with the mod­els images along with a age ver­i­fi­ca­tion image if appro­pri­ate. This also tells me the terms and con­di­tions the set was con­ducted under either a Time for or a paid ses­sion. Time for is more restric­tive than paid in that they can’t be sold.

Is this a lot of work? Sure it is, but if you’re seri­ous about what you do and don’t want to keep mak­ing expen­sive mis­takes then you have to carry out some kind of review process on your gear and your work­flow. Remem­ber if you’re not improv­ing your abil­i­ties then you’re not doing your job right and as a pho­tog­ra­pher you owe it to your client to be the best you can be.

These are my steps for each camera:

• Rear focus enabled in CF functions.
• Shoot with­out CF card disabled
• Focus points are set­ting to track­ing on the nav-stick

Note: These are only checked if the backup bat­tery fails in the camera.

• For­mat the card(s) after data backup.
• Check sen­sor, viewfinder for dirt. Clean if necessary.
• Check cam­era for any issues such as strange noises, dam­age or strap wear.
• Reset cam­era ISO, aper­ture and Shut­ter Speed. Also ver­ify cam­era is set to cap­ture RAW if you’ve been shoot­ing JPG.

That’s it, cam­era checked. I then charge the bat­tery if appro­pri­ate. Newer Canon bat­ter­ies last a long time in my cam­eras so usu­ally charge before a ses­sion if there’s been a gap of more than a few days or, if I shot two or more ses­sions back to back.

Flash guns are pretty much the same. I have a check­list of CF func­tions for each model of flash which are checked if the bat­ter­ies have been stored out­side the flash­gun. I reset the flash guns to defaults so I can just grab and set to what I need instead of try­ing to remem­ber what I last used.

Stu­dio lights don’t need as many checks done to them, I mainly review cables for wear, dam­age to the bulbs and cas­ing and that’s it. I leave the set­tings alone because they’re not as com­plex as flash guns or cam­eras plus they’re always changing.

I then check bags for wear and tear, this is impor­tant if you’ve been in a loca­tion that can cause abra­sion or dam­age to fab­ric. Whilst most cam­era bags are well made and can han­dle this stress it’s worth check­ing just to be on the safe side. If I’ve been doing a beach ses­sion I empty the bag and remove any sand that the bag has man­aged to acquire.

After all this the back up should be done or I can take a break before start on sort­ing and culling the images.

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